dementor daycare v
by queendementor
Summary: a daycare field trip to the park can't possibly go wrong...until it does.


**dementor daycare v**

_a/n: for dragon! happy birthday! let's hope there isn't pea cake._

With all the warm summer days going on, Les knew a field trip was in order, one that would allow the children to spend some time outside. The only question was where to take them.

Her friend Dragon had suggested a trip to Aberforth's farm, but when she brought it up with Barty, he just sighed and said, "Alessia, why would you want to subject the poor man to that?" It was true that Aberforth probably didn't want their son's discarded pants thrown in his face, so that trip was postponed until Gellert learned to keep his pants on.

After discarding a few more ideas, she and Barty finally agreed on a trip to a nearby park. There was a playground for the little ones, enough green space for the older ones to do whatever they wanted, and a pool for the perpetually-overheated Nagini. There was also a splash area for the toddlers, which would save Les the trouble of having to put inflatable floaties on all those little arms. And after this, or perhaps as a little break, she and Barty could provide a picnic lunch.

So that was exactly what they did.

The parents of the eleven children had all been told to simply drop them off at the park, because Les did not want to have to drag them back and forth between here and the daycare. Now that all were gathered, she began to go over the rules.

"Before you are free to play, there are some things I need to tell you," she started.

She was immediately interrupted by the strange swooshing sound of Chastity pulling Gellert's swim shorts back up.

Les turned first to the toddlers. "You are to use the playground solely for its intended purpose. If I see anyone climbing up a slide or jumping from anything, you're going to take a time-out with Uncle Barty. If you are on the playground and wish to use the splash area, you come and tell one of us. If you wish to return to the playground, you tell one of us again. And there will be consequences for anyone who removes their pants."

The toddlers quietly agreed. Newt's plush niffler also nodded.

With the younger children informed of the rules, Les now addressed the older children.

"The four of you, on the other hand, are old enough that I can trust you not to get into trouble." _Physically, anyway,_ Les thought, glancing at Alecto. "Therefore, you may do whatever you want. However, there will be consequences if any of you break my trust."

At the expressions given by Credence and Modesty, she hurriedly added, "Said consequences will not result in bodily harm. Or toilet peas. Or anything else of that nature."

Now that this was established, the children were allowed to amuse themselves at the park.

-x-

As soon as Les sat down on a bench to watch over the little ones, she saw Albie, grinning, slide down a slide headfirst. At once the others copied him, laughing as they wiggled off the slide, landed on their fronts, and gleefully went up to do it again.

So she had to lay down another rule.

"You are to slide sitting down," Les said. "With your feet first. Anything else, like I already stated, will lead to a time-out with Uncle Barty."

They didn't do that again. But she did have to give the toddlers more rules she didn't expect to ever have to.

"One person down the slide at a time, Albie and Gel,"

"Draco, you can't just sit in the crawling tube. If you're not going to crawl through it, you can't be in it."

"Please don't eat the sand, Newt. You'll get a tummyache, and then your niffler might get sick."

Newt, sitting in the sandbox with his niffler beside him, seemed confused as to why Les might not want him to eat the sand. But he frowned, looked at his niffler, and proceeded to use a shovel to form sand into a small mound.

Just after Les finally managed to convince Albie to go down the slide first, and then Gel would follow, Severus approached his mother. He wanted to swing, but he was too little to reach the swings without her help.

It was then that Les asked Barty to come over and help with the toddlers. After all, she knew that in the time it took to lift Severus into a swing, Gellert would probably have his pants off and thrown somewhere.

-x-

Les had specifically stated that the regular pool was off-limits to all but the four older children, as she was not about to explain to someone's parent that they had drowned. Therefore, this made the pool a lovely place for Nagini to have a soak.

This was where Credence placed her, offering her relief from the hot summer day.

-x-

The splash area was entirely empty when Alecto came over to it. Maisie made her wear a dress over her shiny bathing suit, but she probably didn't need that anymore. Alecto made sure Les wasn't watching, then tossed the dress in a heap on the grass and picked up her bag of rice (a plastic one, not her cloth bag that would get soggy if she tried putting it in the water.)

Alecto picked out a grain of rice (which she'd named Tisiphone) and held it under a small jet of water until she was convinced her rice was thoroughly cleaned. Dropping the grain back into the bag, she selected another one and did the same thing again.

About halfway through her rice bathing, little Newt decided he and his niffler wanted to use the splash area. Alecto didn't expect the little boy to appear behind her, which caused her to drop her rice. A single grain of rice was easily misplaced in a place like this, and when Alecto looked around, she realized she couldn't see it anymore.

So she responded the same way she usually did when something didn't go her way.

Alecto's crying got Chastity's attention, and with both Les and Barty attempting to insert little Gellert back into his pants, it seemed it fell to her to see what was wrong.

"What are you doing?" she asked Alecto and Newt.

Newt didn't understand exactly what was going on, just that his niffler wanted to play, so he said nothing. Alecto said something Chastity couldn't quite make out, then tearfully insisted she search the splash area for a grain of rice.

Chastity sighed. She hadn't planned on getting wet. Besides, the whole situation reminded her of the time her adoptive mother had forced her and her siblings to search for one very specific leaf she had decided she wanted. That had taken the better part of an afternoon.

But she tried to search for the rice anyway. She even asked Newt if he wanted to help, and he gladly agreed. He picked up his niffler and told it they had a job to do.

Most of what Chastity found was just tiny rocks, on one occasion she found a dead bug of some kind, and when she found a soggy leaf, she quickly tossed it aside (though she half-expected Mary Lou to show up and yell at her for unceremoniously dumping a leaf on the ground.) But no rice appeared, and all Newt managed to produce was the same dead bug Chastity had already rejected. Alecto, meanwhile, had stopped crying, but she only grew more and more upset when her rice was not to be found.

She was just about to start crying again when Chastity got the idea to look through the picnic basket. Trying not to get the food inside wet, she looked through it just to see if, by some miracle, there might be rice inside.

No rice appeared. The basket only contained the food that the children would eat for lunch, and rice was not on the day's menu. Chastity closed the basket. What was she going to do? The simple option would be to tell Alecto that her rice had gone to rice heaven, but she knew that wasn't going to sit well with her.

In a state of slight despair, she tried to find Les or Barty to ask what she should do.

Les appeared almost as soon as she began looking for her, with little Draco in her arms attempting to stuff part of her cloak in his mouth. "Chastity? What's wrong? Why are you soaked through?"

Without waiting for a response, she used her dementor mouth to suck the water away from Chastity. But her disapproving look didn't disappear with the water.

"And is that rice in your hair?"

The dementor plucked the offending object from Chastity's hair, examining it. "Rice indeed."

Whether this was the grain Alecto had lost or another entirely, she no longer cared. Chastity just said, "I'll explain it later, miss Alessia," before she returned to the splash area to give the rice back to Alecto.

Alecto seemed willing to accept the rice as the grain she'd lost, though as soon as she received it, Chastity immediately had to leave to replace Gellert's shorts. There truly never was a dull moment with the daycare children.

-x-

While Nagini enjoyed her soak, she was startled by the gate to the pool opening. Modesty came into view shortly afterward, a towel draped over her shoulders. Nagini hissed at her. This meant _Oh, it's the little girl with the leaf rubbings! _But Modesty didn't know this, and she slowly began to back away.

Nagini opted to resume her human form to state what she had actually meant. "No, no, you don't have to leave, miss Credence's sister. I was only saying hello."

Fortunately, Modesty appeared to relax a bit. "Hello to you too, miss Nagini."

Depositing her towel on a chair, Modesty sat on the edge of the pool, dipping first a toe, then one foot, then the other. She watched as Nagini returned to her serpentine form to continue her soak, then frowned as a falling leaf landed on the snake's head.

She quickly reminded herself that the leaf had to have fallen from a tree, as there were no leaf machines present and there had not been any for a long time. But the leaf in the pool did make her wonder...

"Modesty?" Credence got her attention when she was silent for a while.

"Credence, are pools just supposed to have leaves in them?"

Perhaps someone else might wonder exactly where she had gotten that idea. But Credence knew all too well that she had a point. Every pool, no, every body of water the siblings remembered encountering had had its fair share of leaves for most of their lives.

Even now, leaves still turned up sometimes. And perhaps they would never truly be able to outrun them.

-x-

After she helped Chastity put Gellert's pants back on for about the eighteenth time, Les decided that maybe now was a good time for the children to have lunch. It wouldn't be too long until parents arrived to pick them up, and she wanted them fed and relatively calm by then.

She enlisted her husband's help in setting up a blanket for everyone to sit on, then sent Chastity to go round up the children.

Newt insisted a plate be prepared for his niffler, and Albie absolutely had to sit next to Gel. While the toddlers were being seated, Alecto decided she wanted a cookie and reached into the basket for one, which Chastity was too busy to deal with and simply pretended not to notice.

She truly didn't notice that Alecto had left the basket open, with the bag of cookies exposed to whoever wanted them. And as Chastity tried to get little Severus to sit still, Alecto took a second cookie and then a third before Modesty attempted to stop her.

With all the children as still as the grown-ups could get them, Les began handing out plates, while Barty handled the food. Utensils were given to everyone, though they both knew they would still be wiping off toddlers once they were finished.

Surprisingly, everyone began eating in relative peace (though Modesty did examine her sandwich for peas before she ate it.) That is, until Alecto asked when they could have dessert, opening the basket and confirming for the toddlers that there were indeed cookies.

"Cookies!" Gellert shouted, dropping his shorts in celebration. Once again Chastity put them back.

"I wanna cookie!" Draco said, pushing aside his plate of lunch and trying to reach the cookies from across the blanket.

While Les and Barty told the children to finish their lunch first and Chastity positioned herself beside Gellert so he would keep his clothes on, no one noticed that just before the basket was closed again, Credence reached in and took a cookie. Surely one wouldn't hurt...

Harry ate his remaining lunch so quickly he soon began to cough, and Barty had to pat the little boy on the back for a few moments until he looked a little better. Newt, on the other hand, decided he was no longer hungry and tried to feed his niffler. Clearly, the grown-ups just needed to hand out the cookies before anything else went wrong.

Chastity picked up the bag of cookies and began handing them out. To the children's delight, they were chocolate chip, though Les had planned ahead and brought oatmeal cookies so Credence would not begin to nausea. Because no one wanted to clean that up.

She was entirely certain that she'd given him an oatmeal cookie, as the dementor distinctly remembered that Chastity had the bag of regular cookies. But Credence had barely taken two bites before he suddenly began to nausea down his front.

Albie shrieked, cramming the rest of his cookie into his mouth and sprinting away. Nagini and Modesty knelt beside the Obscurial, trying to figure out what might have caused this.

Les sent the remaining children away to resume their playtime, and Barty was sent to keep an eye on them. Once they were gone, she sat on the blanket facing the three that stayed behind.

"Credence?" she asked. "I know I gave you a bowl of soup and an oatmeal cookie, but did you eat anything else?"

"Just...one of the cookies the others had," Credence responded. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Dementor. I...I just didn't think one would make me begin to nausea..."

The dementor sighed, her face softening.

"You don't need to be sorry. It's natural to want a sweet treat every now and again. But this is why Dragon and I tell you to stick to your list. We don't want you to nausea any more than you do."

Les didn't have any blackcurrant barley water, which Dragon tended to give him, but she did have a bottle of anti-nausea potion. She gave it to Credence, then vanished any and all traces of previous nausea.

"Just drink that. You'll feel better soon."

-x-

Fortunately for Credence, Dragon was the first parent to arrive, and it didn't take her long to appear. "What happened, Les?" she inquired.

"Credence ate something he shouldn't have and began to nausea," the dementor said. "The anti-nausea potion seems to be working well, but you're a little more knowledgeable on how to handle such matters."

Dragon assured Les that she'd handled it fine, then turned to her adopted son to make sure he was okay. Les took this as an opportunity to find Scabior and pry him away from the playground equipment before Dragon had to do it herself. The toddler was trying to snatch Gel's pants, but fortunately she could step in before he was running around in his undergarments again.

By the time the flailing toddler had stopped trying to run off, Dragon was waiting for him. She and her family thanked Les for keeping the children entertained, then turned to leave.

"Yes. Thank you for setting this up, Mrs. Dementor," Credence said.

A smile graced the dementor's features, which really was quite a feat. "You're very welcome."

Next to arrive was Tassie, there to receive Newt, Albie, Pickett, the plush niffler, and Gellert's shorts (which Les confiscated immediately.) Cam got an earful of what Harry had done with Draco and Sev, and the soggy Draco left a Draco-print on Ella.

Maisie, hand-in-tongue with her husband, came after Ella. Amycus picked up Alecto and her rice bag, which put her in the perfect position to drop grains of rice on the dementor's head. Once again, she felt it was easiest to lie and pretend Alecto had been the sweetest little angel that ever lived. It wasn't like Maisie would ever believe any different anyway.

The Carrow-Malfoy family left, mentioning something about stopping at a bakery on the way home. Les sighed and collapsed onto a bench. Barty soon did the same. Chastity tried a little harder to hide her exhaustion, but she found herself on the bench as well.

Despite the pantlessness, tantrums, and nausea, this actually hadn't been so bad.

Barty, on the other hand, almost found himself relieved that it had been eleven children that had done all this. Because all of them and all their antics combined were still less painful than trying to keep a tiny Mary Lou under control.

_-end-_

_if you want someone that knows, don't look at me_


End file.
